Route summary: An easy outward leg along a picturesque cycle path to warm up before a rougher and more challenging return leg.
Location Details: Dartmoor National Park is a large area of upland moorland in south Devon, capped with exposed granite hilltops known as tors. It’s a wild and rugged area, providing remote, rocky riding. This route skirts the edges of the park to provide an easy ride that lets you experience its beauty.
Start/Finish: Okehampton YHA, Klondyke Road (grid ref SX 592/944, postcode EX20 1EW)
Getting there: Take the A30 to Okehampton and follow the signs to the train station. Keep ahead under the bridge on Klondyke Road and turn left into the (YHA) car park.
Facilities: There’s a youth hostel, with cafe, at the start of the ride (0870 770 5978). For other options, contact Okehampton Tourist Information Centre (01837 53020). There are various placesto eat in Okehampton and the Highwayman Inn in Sourton is worth a visit. For spares, head to Moor Cycles in Okehampton (01837 659677).
Directions: Exit the car park and turn right, under the railway bridge. Turn immediately left and left again to join the Granite Way cycle track (off-road). Follow it across the Meldon viaduct and then, after nearly 4km – just before the bridge, with St Thomas a Becket Church in Sourton on your right – turn right.
Turn left at the junction that follows shortly afterwards, over the bridge/cycle path. Go uphill on a grassy track, then turn left at the track crossing below Sourton Tors on to a grassy trail with a shallower gradient. Continue straight on, ignoring several grassy tracks that cross the trail, aiming for the clump of trees.
Bear right to join another track alongside a wall (on your right).Continue to a gate in the trees, then go through a second gate on a grassy track between stone walls. Continue straight ahead to a junction and bear right, signed to Meldon Reservoir. Cross a field and follow the track (with a wall on your left) down a grassy downhill.Go over a road and continue straight ahead, signed to Meldon Viaduct, downhill.
Ignore a bridleway on the right and then go right over a small bridge. Keep going straight, then bear left on a grassy track that takes you to a gate and a Tarmac track under the viaduct you passed over earlier.Turn left and then shortly afterwards bear right on a bridleway that goes downhill through a wood to a road.
Go right, over the bridge/road. Then turn right on a wide track to a farm. Go right at the fork by the farm, uphill. Keep right to go through a gate and follow this track alongside a fence.Pass through a gate and into the golf course.
Continue straight ahead on this track – watch out for golf balls! – as it changes from grass to gravel. At the road, turn right and then left on Parklands Road. Go past where you joined the cycle track at the start, and go right, under the bridge, back to the car park, on the left.
Route type: Cross Country